One Day After RNC Calls For Minority Outreach, Arkansas GOP Passes Bill To Suppress Minority Vote

Monday morning, the Republican National Committee released a lengthy “autopsy” of their 2012 electoral loss, much of which was devoted to the GOP’s weak standing among people of color. “It is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party” the autopsy proclaims, and “the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.”

One day later, Arkansas Republicans showed their mutual respect and spirit of caring for people of color by passing a law that will keep many of them from casting a vote.

Yesterday, the Arkansas Senate passed — on an entirely party-line vote — a so-called voter ID law requiring voters to show photo identification before they can cast a ballot. The same voter suppression measure already passed the state House with all but one of the votes for the bill coming from Republicans. These laws, which are popular among Republican lawmakers, accomplish little more than disenfranchisement. Even conservative estimates suggest that these laws will prevent 2 to 3 percent of registered voters from casting a ballot. And this impact is felt hardest by low-income voters, students and people of color — all of who tend to prefer Democrats to Republicans.

The most common argument raised in favor of voter ID laws is that they prevent in-person voter fraud, but this claim cannot be squared with reality. A person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls. A Wisconsin study found that only 0.00023 percent of votes are the product of such fraud. So voter ID laws disenfranchise a large chunk of voters — between 2 and 9 percent, according to different reports on their effect — in order to prevent a virtually non-existent form of voter fraud.

The bill will now go to Gov. Mike Beebe (D-AR), who should veto it.

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BREAKING: Rhode Island House Passes Marriage Equality

Openly gay Rep. Frank Ferri (D), one of the bill's sponsors.

As expected, the Rhode Island House of Representatives voted today to approve marriage equality legislation with a vote of 51-19. The bill now advances to the Senate, where the Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed (D) previously blocked a vote. This year, though, Paiva Weed has promised to allow a vote after approval in the House, but it’s unclear when that will occur. Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I) has promised to sign the bill and block any attempts to refer the question to a referendum.

An October poll showed that 56 percent of Rhode Island voters support marriage equality. Same-sex marriages from other states are already recognized by state agencies. After over a year of offering civil unions, less than 100 couples bothered to obtain one. All other states in New England — Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut — already recognize and offer same-sex marriages.

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Chicago Passes Strong Law Against Wage Theft

The Chicago City Council yesterday adopted a law that will revoke the license of businesses found to engage in wage theft. This addresses a key problem for the city, as a study of Chicago workers “found that over 60 percent of workers are underpaid by more than $1 an hour while 67 percent were not paid their legally required overtime rate.”

In the last decade, wage theft complaint have exploded, increasing 400 percent around the country. Overtime wage theft complaints hit a record high in 2011 and likely exceeded the record again in 2012.

A 2009 report showed that more than two-thirds of low-income employees experienced a wage law violation in just the previous week. “The conventional wisdom has been that to the extent there were violations, it was confined to a few rogue employers or to especially disadvantaged workers, like undocumented immigrants,” said Nik Theodore, an author of the study and a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “What our study shows is that this is a widespread phenomenon across the low-wage labor market in the United States.”

As Salon’s Josh Eidelson reported, “Recent years have seen increasing traction for campaigns to strengthen wage theft penalties and remedies. Those efforts have also inspired a counter-attack: Last year, Florida Republicans and big businesses pushed a bill that would have overridden local wage theft measures. ” (HT: Ned Resnikoff)

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House Passes Senate’s Fiscal Cliff Bill

After threatening to amend the Senate’s fiscal cliff bill to include spending reductions, the House passed the measure Tuesday evening by a vote of 257-167, with 85 Republican votes. 151 Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and 16 Democrats voted against the bill. The “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012” now goes to President Obama for his signature.

During debate, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) urged Republicans to support the bill, arguing that it “settles the level of revenue Washington should bring in.” The GOP has indicated that it would not support revenue increases in the upcoming battles to raise the debt ceiling, turn off the sequester cuts, and keep the government running through a continuing budget resolution. Instead, conservative lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have said that they will take advantage of these critical debates to extract deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

“I just don’t want the gentleman’s statement that this settles permanently how much revenue will be made available,” Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) said in response to Camp. “The President has made clear there has to be a balanced approach and no one should be misled into thinking otherwise. No one.”

As the House began voting on the measure, Grover Norquist gave his blessing, tweeting that since the vote took place in the new year — after the Bush tax cuts have technically expired — “Every R voting for Senate bill is cutting taxes and keeping his/her pledge.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) explains why he voted in favor of the bill: “When you like something, you vote for it. …I wasn’t afraid.” House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who usually doesn’t vote, also backed the measure.

In a statement from the White House, President Obama praised the bill as “one step in the broader effort to strengthen our economy.” But he admitted that “the deficit is still too high” and called for a balanced approach of raising new revenues by closing tax loopholes and eliminating deductions for rich individuals and corporations and cutting government spending. Obama called Medicare the “biggest contributor to our deficit” and said that Congress must “find a way to reform our program without hurting seniors who count on it to survive.” He also drew an important line in the sand, reiterating that he “will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up, through the laws that they passed.” If Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, Obama said, “the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic, far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff.”

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Tech at Night: CISPA passes the House, FCC passes campaign regulations, Boehner calls out Obama

So, the Internet died this week or something. CISPA was amended much, as I gather mostly tightening up some alleged privacy concerns. Then it passed the House. I don’t know if it’ll become law, but it’s a good idea. The comparisons with SOPA are deceptive.

Speaker Boehner cut to the heart of the matter, pointing out that President Obama’s CISPA veto threat was rooted in his desire to control the Internet. The White House was stung enough to reply, but it’s true: CISPA opposition is a ruse to fool feeble minded leftys into thinking Republicans are the threat, rather than the Democrat Cybersecurity bill in the Senate, pushed by Joe Lieberman. It’s Lieberman-Collins that’s the threat to liberty online.

More and more it’s clear we dodged a bullet by preventing Joe Barton from becoming Energy and Commerce chairman.

Darrell Issa’s on a roll: His FISMA overhaul also passed, passing easily under suspension on the heels of his transparency bill passing by voice vote. Secure the government. If the government is so good at Internet security that Barack Obama wants to regulate, then let’s just clean house internally instead. As long as Anonymous can hit things like the CIA website, there’s work to be done. I know, it’s just a website, but what other websites are at risk?

Look, guys, the bad guys are out there and looking for ways to attack America online. They’re sharing information amongst themselves, too. That’s why we need CISPA: to level the playing field. That’s also why improving the government’s standards for itself also matters.

The FCC continues to outdo itself when it comes to power grabs. Now they’re after content: passing regulations attempting to stifle political speech ahead of the election.

Yet unfortunately Chuck Grassley is relenting on his FCC holds, saying he’s satisfied with the FCC starting to open up to him, even though there’s still more investigating to be done on the LightSquared situation.

Jim DeMint has got some people worried. Even as he questioned Aereo, he’s threatening the unfair advantage broadcasters have in retransmission negotiations. That’s why lately you’re seeing lots of sob stories about broadcasters. This is a coordinated effort to make you think that DeMint is the Grinch attacking the poor local TV station. Ignore it.

Spectrum: we need it, the Democrats obstruct that process as in the cases of Verizon, AT&T, and any other high profile deal they can get their thieving hands onto, but Cliff Stearns and the Republican House are trying to fix it. Enough said.

That’s all we need for a great wireless market. we don’t need regulation, just freed-up spectrum for competition and growth.

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Tech at Night: House passes key FCC reform, House and Senate SECURE IT bills deserve passage

FCC reform advances in the House. Greg Walden’s FCC Process Reform Act is a needed bill, so I’m glad that it went from committee to the floor, and took minimal modification in passing. I like that it got an extra poke at FCC being more closed on FOIA requests than even CIA.

Locking in the reforms is important, and CTIA is right in saying we need a “more transparent, predictable regulatory process.”

The SECURE IT cybersecurity alternative is also important. Ron Johnson is a key champion of the bill in the Senate, so you know it has conservative support. As it should, since the core of the bill is to enable important but voluntary information sharing. The bad guys online are already sharing data freely. The good guys must be able to share data and to be flexible on defense.

My own representative* Mary Bono Mack is backing a similar the bill in the House, so you know it has broad support across the spectrum of the GOP. Likewise John McCain’s driving the bill in the Senate instead of working with Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins tells you that the Democrats (plus Susan Collins) really aren’t interested in compromising on their attempts to empower government, including DHS. Naturally FCC loves the smell of expanding government in the morning, too. Smells like picking winners and losers.

George Soros-funded Public Knowledge is wrong on its push to impose Net Neutrality, er, Open Internet penalties on Comcast. Of course, as radical as PK is, it’s not surprising that Michael Copps is going directly from the FCC to that organization. I would have guessed Free Press, but Public Knowledge is just as out of the mainstream.

Good bill, bad bill: Good bill: outlaw UN regulation of the Internet. Bad bill: new American regulation of the Internet in the form of, get this, Facebook password regulation.

Spectrum: Getting government spectrum in use by the private sector is a great tool to add to our options in fixing the coming spectrum crunch. Blocking private spectrum transfers, as T-Mobile suddenly wants now that it’s Verizon and Comcast, not AT&T and T-Mobile, is not something we should be doing.

* Bono Mack has been my representative since Sonny died, and will be until Monday when I leave California for good, and move to Jim Moran’s district.

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